“For Our Generation and the Ones to Follow”: Intergenerational justice and the Child-as-savior trope in Juliana v. United States and the Netflix documentary Youth v Gov
Abstract
Global warming is the most pressing intergenerational problem of our time, yet those most affected by it—youth and future generations—are often denied a voice in the debate on climate change. This article explores how the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case Juliana v. United States and the 2020 Netflix documentary Youth v Gov on the surface seem to offer a voice to youth, but in reality reinforce this marginalization of youth voices. Drawing on Lee Edelman’s concept of reproductive futurism, I argue that the case and documentary rely on the child-as-innocent-savior trope to simultaneously cast the young plaintiffs as innocent saviors of society and make them responsible for fixing a planet ruined by the very adults who look to them for salvation and redemption. I analyze both the court documents—the oral arguments, briefs, and decisions—as well as scenes from the documentary to demonstrate the different ways the court functions as a site of intergenerational clash and cooperation. I argue that the case and documentary simultaneously offer and deprive the young plaintiffs of a meaningful voice in the debate on the environmental future of, and the role of intergenerational justice in the United States.
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1. Introduction
- 1 A. Crimmins et al., “The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientif (...)
- 2 Aoife Daly, “Climate Competence: Youth Climate Activism and Its Impact on International Human Right (...)
- 3 Lena von Zabern and Christopher D Tulloch, “Rebel with a Cause: The Framing of Climate Change and I (...)
- 4 John Bowder, “Kids Confront Feinstein over Green New Deal,” The Hill, Feb. 22, 2019, https://thehil (...)
- 5 Youtube: Cut for Time: Dianne Feinstein Message – Saturday Night Live, March 19, 2019, https://www. (...)
1Children today are one of groups most severely impacted by global warming.1 Their young age means that they are unable to directly influence policy making, but will face the worst impact of global warming that many adults alive today will not live to see.2 Despite the widespread protest of youth activists over this injustice, the voices of younger generations still struggle to be heard and are often ignored or marginalized.3 A good example of this is when, in 2019, then 85-year-old California Senator Dianne Feinstein scolded school children that petitioned her to back to the Green New Deal. Feinstein was offended that the children, who had yet to reach voting age, were telling her how to do her job. The exchange was filmed and shared online, where the image of the environmentally engaged youth being dismissed by the angry senator was met with outrage.4 The encounter was satirized by Saturday Night Live later that week, with an increasingly angry Senator Feinstein (played by Cecily Strong) telling a group of wide-eyed kids to “stay in your lane and step the fuck off.”5
- 6 Lisa Friedman, “Dianne Feinstein Lectures Children Who Want Green New Deal, Portraying It as Untena (...)
- 7 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, (...)
2The Feinstein encounter illustrates how the debate over climate change can easily (be) turn(ed) into a conflict between generations. Sunrise Movement, the NGO behind the schoolchildren’s petition, argued that the incident underlined the need for new leadership in Washington, while Brian Fallon—senior communications advisor to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign—framed it as a fight between the future and the past, writing on Twitter that “the divide in today’s Democratic Party […] is generational.”6 The incident and these responses not only highlight how climate change is inherently viewed through the lens of intergenerational justice, but also what Lee Edelman has termed the logic of “reproductive futurism”—the idea that children represent the future and that, in safeguarding their future, adults can redeem themselves.7 The SNL parody relies on this logic for its comic effect, since children are generally considered innocent recipients of our affection, not malevolent political adversaries.
- 8 For an incomplete overview, see Larissa Parker et al., “When the Kids Put Climate Change on Trial: (...)
- 9 See for example: Aoife Daly, Pernilla Leviner, and Rebecca Thorburn Stern, “How Children Are Taking (...)
3In this article, I will draw on the concepts of intergenerational justice and reproductive futurism to analyze another intergenerational encounter: the legal case Juliana v. United States (hereafter abbreviated to Juliana) and the Netflix documentary Youth v Gov. Juliana is one of several youth-led climate cases that were filed after the Paris Agreement of 2015.8 In the absence of meaningful climate policy, youth across the globe started suing their governments to force recognition of their rights to a clean and livable future environment.9 The plaintiffs in Juliana are an intergenerational coalition of 21 young people—aged 8 to 19 when the case was filed in 2015—and their adult guardians. The case was decided in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Federal Court of Appeals, which covers the U.S. west coast, and deals with the question of whether the United States government can be held responsible for climate change and should reverse course to prevent future disaster. The documentary Youth v Gov tracks the case from the plaintiffs’ point of view.
- 10 See for example: Kyrre Kverndokk, “Talking About Your Generation: ‘Our Children’ as a Trope in Clim (...)
- 11 Edelman, No Future, 11.
- 12 Ibid., 13.
4The case and documentary both address climate change as an intergenerational problem in which members of different generations interact, clash, and cooperate on this issue. My analysis focuses on how they position the plaintiffs as voices of the future and advocates of intergenerational justice. I will draw on Edelman’s concept of reproductive futurism to identify and criticize the trope of ‘the Child.’ This trope affords the plaintiffs special status, but at the same time reduces them to vessels for adult hope for a better future. Edelman’s thinking originates in queer theory and criticizes the inherent heteronormativity of the trope. Scholars have increasingly recognized its analytical usefulness for the study of environmental discourse.10 Following Edelman, I distinguish this idealized version of the Child from the experiences of the individual young plaintiffs.11 Throughout this article, I will distinguish the literal voice of individual youth from attempts by adults to speak through and for them. In the last case, the trope is invoked to portrays the Child as the future savior of society, without whom, Edelman explains, we are told “there is no future and no redemption.”12 In addition, I will explain, the trope relies heavily on the notion that the Child is an innocent bystander, absolved from responsibility for the current climate problem.
- 13 S. Gavin Weiser and Linsay DeMartino, “Reproductive Futurity: Policy, Pop-Culture, and Praxis,” Rev (...)
5In what follows, I will argue that while Juliana and Youth v Gov claim to take the needs of the young plaintiffs—as representatives of future generations—seriously, yet, each in their own way, fail to live up to this by replicating the Child-as-innocent-savior trope. The Court’s decision in Juliana draws on the trope to place the burden for fixing the climate on the plaintiffs, while the documentary, even though it offers them a voice, continues to rely on “the Child as the savior in the crisis of our own making,” as Gavin Weiser and Linsay DeMartino aptly put it in a different context.13 Both case and documentary turn the young plaintiffs into society’s future redemption—the only ones who can, and in fact must, save society from its environmentally destructive self—while losing sight of and ignoring their actual needs and interests.
6This article starts by taking a closer look at the concept of intergenerational justice and its relation to the Child trope and argues that minors are made to occupy a unique position that enables them to claim to speak for the future. The next two sections focus on how intergenerational justice and reproductive futurism feature in Juliana and Youth v Gov. The second section looks at the court documents, including the original complaint filed by the plaintiffs and their legal team in 2015, the oral arguments before the Ninth Circuit Court, and, especially, the judges’ opinions in 2020. The third section analyzes how the documentary portrays the case as both a clash of generations, as well as an opportunity for coalition building between generations.
- 14 Bill Nichols and Jaimie Baron, Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition, 4th ed. (Bloomington: I (...)
- 15 Nichols and Baron, Introduction to Documentary, 79-80, 83, 76.
- 16 Ibid., 13.
7My method throughout is a combination of close reading and rhetorical analysis of the court documents and documentary film. Scholars of popular documentary film rank rhetorical analysis as an important tool.14 Bill Nichols and Jaimie Baron note that documentaries often succeed in making abstract issues like justice and climate change proximate and accessible for the audience by portraying the protagonists as credible (ethos).15 Like all nonfiction, documentaries presume to tell us what the world is like, but, like fiction, they offer a heavily edited representation of that reality.16 As a result of these editorial choices, I will argue that Juliana simultaneously offers as well as deprives the plaintiffs of a meaningful voice in the intergenerational debate on climate change.
2. Intergenerational Justice and Youth Activism in Juliana
- 17 Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint (Sept. 10, 2015), 34.
8Juliana forms an intergenerational encounter that brings together different generations in three main ways. First, the plaintiffs form an intergenerational group, as the 21 children are supported by a number of guardians, some of whom are their grandparents. The environmental nonprofit organization that represents them, Our Children’s Trust, is part of the intergenerational coalition as well. Julia Olson is the nonprofit’s Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel and also serves as the attorney and spokesperson for the plaintiffs in court. Finally, the plaintiffs are joined by Columbia professor and former NASA Goddard Institute-director James Hansen (born in 1941), as self-styled “representative of future generations.”17 Together, the group spans ages 8 to 80.
9Second, the young plaintiffs not only square off against much older defendants—among others, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Mick Mulvaney (born 1967), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) director Andrew Wheeler (born 1964), and, of course, then-President Donald J. Trump (born 1946)—but also considerably older judges, the youngest of whom was 59 years old when the decision was issued. In this sense, too, the court case was an intergenerational encounter, but one in which two groups that would not ordinarily meet publicly—kids and adolescents on the one hand, and middle-aged professionals on the other—sat down and faced each other in the same courtroom.
- 18 Richard J. Lazarus, The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court (Cambridge, MA: B (...)
- 19 James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our La (...)
- 20 Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint (Sept. 10, 2015), 34.
10Finally, briefly, the case transcends existing generations as one guardian, the aforementioned James Hansen, claimed to represent not only his grandchild, but also all future generations. Hansen’s 1988 testimony about rising temperatures to the U.S. Senate made national news and raised national awareness about the risks of climate change.18 Hansen continued his environmental activism in his retirement, explaining that he hated the idea that his grandchildren would one day say “Opa [Granddad] understood what was happening, but he did not make it clear” to the wider public.19 In the original complaint of Juliana, Hansen is portrayed by the plaintiffs’ legal team as the guardian of “plaintiff future generations,” and in the name of their fundamental right to future life, he demands a “cessation of governmental action that exacerbates” the risk of climate catastrophe.20
- 21 It is important to note that age is not an indicator of one’s views on climate change. A good examp (...)
11Despite these intergenerational dimensions, the interaction between generations in the actual courtroom is very limited. Although the suit is brought by young people, the courtroom is dominated by older adults and no one under the age of 43 spoke up in court during the entire case. This, in itself, is exemplary of the logic of reproductive futurism in which the future is determined over the heads of those who are invoked to represent it and will have to live through the consequences of climate change. The documentary, by contrast, offers the plaintiffs an opportunity to make their voices heard and, therefore, constitutes an important supplementary source for analyzing the rhetoric of intergenerational justice and the logic of reproductive futurism. Before turning to these sources, however, I will take a closer look at the concept of intergenerational justice and explain how it enables the claim that children represent and speak for the future.21
- 22 Joerg Chet Tremmel, ed., Handbook of Intergenerational Justice (Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA, U (...)
- 23 Roman Krznaric, The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World (London: WH Allen, (...)
12According to Jörg Tremmel, the term intergenerational justice is best understood by contrasting it to intragenerational justice, which includes more temporally immediate types of social justice such as justice between genders, the ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ world, etc. What sets intergenerational justice apart is its temporal arc; where intragenerational justice pursues immediate aims that can be achieved over the span of a parliamentary session, Tremmel suggests, intergenerational justice aims at outcomes a hundred years from now.22 As a result, intergenerational justice looks beyond the interests of any one generation and encourages a “sense of collective responsibility,” as Roman Krznaric puts it, as well as the type of “deep stewardship” of the earth and its inhabitants that is often associated with Indigenous ways of knowing.23
- 24 Dale Jamieson, Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (...)
- 25 For attempts to overcome this, see: Debra Hawhee, A Sense of Urgency: How the Climate Crisis Is Cha (...)
13One particular concern of intergenerational justice scholars is our obligation to future generations. The scope here, again, is not simply today’s children or even their children (our grandchildren), but three or more generations down the line (i.e. our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s children and after). As environmental scholar Dale Jamieson points out, this timescale surpasses what most people can fathom. “We care about many of those who are near us in time,” he writes, “because we are directly related to them or because shared circumstances and experiences give us a sense of identification with them.” This “sentimental transitivity,” as he calls it, ceases beyond about four generations. Many people have a hard time identifying with these future people since “they start to become an undifferentiated mass who live in a world that is difficult for us to imagine.”24 It is not simply that most people cannot fathom who these people are; it is also challenging to imagine what their lives will look like.25
- 26 Anja Karnein, “Can We Represent Future Generations?,” in Institutions For Future Generations, edite (...)
- 27 Ibid., 87.
14The future, in other words, lacks a familiar face, and this is sorely felt. Since future generations are not (yet) around, it is difficult to say what their exact interests will be and seemingly impossible to give them an equal say in democratic deliberation. Countless scholars have proposed ways in which future peoples can or should be represented in democracies, but few have convincingly addressed the epistemic problem that our knowledge of future generations’ interest is severely limited.26 As philosopher Anja Karnein points out, however, this should not be taken as an excuse to waive the interests of future generations altogether. While we cannot know the precise ‘subjective’ interests of those living in the future, she argues, we may assume that they share certain ‘objective’ interests with us, including a desire to live in a clean and habitable climate.27 Still, these objective interests need to be represented in the political debate somehow, which raises the question of who can claim to legitimately speak for the future. This is where the young plaintiffs of Juliana come in.
- 28 Rebekah Sheldon, The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe (Minneapolis: University Of Mi (...)
- 29 Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials (New York: Little, Bro (...)
- 30 Luke Winslow and Eli Mangold, Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements (New York: Routl (...)
- 31 Jelte Olthof, “Projecting a Future Present: Greta Thunberg’s Use of Presence at the United Nations (...)
15What sets Juliana v. United States apart from many other climate cases is that it is brought by children who, rhetorically speaking, are better situated to authoritatively claim to speak for the future. First, children are intuitively associated with the future, both in daily life as well as in popular culture.28 Children are literally future adults and, since they are expected to outlive their parents, their future on the planet is longer. Parents and other adults frequently project their aspirations and hopes on children and, in the United States and elsewhere, the idea that children should be better off than their parents is widely cherished—even when many indicators show this is increasingly less the case.29 Second, the strong ethos of the Child trope stems from what they are not: the past. Since they are too young to vote and since many decisions are still made for them by others, children are, to some extent, absolved from blame for the climate crisis. This innocence is perhaps the most important aspect of the youth’s ethos, as it positions them on the moral high ground vis-à-vis adults. As a result, their motives are often not questioned and, as Luke Winslow and Eli Mangold point out, invoking them on one’s side serves as “an explanation in and of itself.”30 It is telling that the most famous of youth climate activists, Greta Thunberg, relied heavily on youthful innocence in her early environmental activism.31
- 32 Samantha Cocco-Klein and Beatrice Mauger, “Children’s Leadership on Climate Change: What Can We Lea (...)
- 33 Daly, “Climate Competence,” 14.
- 34 See climatecasechart.com for a (partial) overview of past and current climate change litigation bro (...)
- 35 Rikki Held v. State of Montana, No. CDV-2020-307 (Montana First Judicial District Court, Lewis and (...)
16Considering the above, it is unsurprising that youth activists successfully have garnered support for environmental issues in and outside the courts. Since 2009, child activists have participated in most United Nations climate change conferences (or COPs), though their influence is often limited to non-binding resolutions.32 Since under-eighteens are denied the vote in the United States and elsewhere, the courts have become a logical alternative route for them to turn to in order to have their voices heard.33 In fact, Juliana is only one of more than 50 cases worldwide since 2015 in which under-eighteen-year-olds sue their governments for environmental relief.34 At least a dozen other such cases have been filed in the United States alone since 2017, the most significant of which is Held v. Montana, decided in 2023, in which a state district judge recognized for the first time that U.S. government violated young people’s constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment by promoting fossil fuel use.35
- 36 For example, some scholars observed in 2018 that: “surprisingly little attention has been given to (...)
- 37 Sally Neas, Ann Ward, and Benjamin Bowman, “Young People’s Climate Activism: A Review of the Litera (...)
- 38 Neas, Ward, and Bowman, “Young People’s Climate Activism,” 5; Frida Buhre, “Child Figurations in Yo (...)
17Despite this, scholarly interest in youth activism was relatively limited before 2018, when Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement burst onto the scene.36 Awareness of climate issues rose among adults and youth alike—the so-called ‘Greta Effect’—and academic interest followed suit.37 Studies published since show that many people’s image of climate activists tends to be female, white, and from privileged backgrounds in the Global North, to the detriment of equally committed, and often more directly affected, activists from the Global South.38 Though not central to my argument, it is worth pointing out that the plaintiffs in Juliana constitute a much more diverse group in terms of race, class, and gender. As I will touch on briefly later, the film Youth v Gov in particular offers a platform for these non-binary, non-white, and Indigenous youth’s voices and environmental concerns.
3. Juliana v. United States
- 39 Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint (Sept. 10, 2015), 56, 94.
18Juliana was filed in 2015 by Kelsey Juliana and 20 other young plaintiffs, supported by the non-profit organization Our Children’s Trust. The plaintiff argued that the federal government’s actions and policies related to climate change violated their 5th Amendment constitutional right to life, liberty, and property, as well as the government’s public trust obligation to protect natural resources for future generations. By permitting and subsidizing the use of fossil fuels, the plaintiffs argued, the U.S. government contributed to climate change and endangered their future well-being. Their aim was a court-ordered intervention requiring the government to take action to reduce carbon emission and fast track the transition of the U.S. to green energy sources.39
- 40 Chloe N. Kempf, “Why Did So Many Do So Little? Movement Building and Climate Change Litigation in t (...)
- 41 Robert V. Percival, “Greening the Constitution - Harmonizing Environmental and Constitutional Value (...)
- 42 Ibid., 814.
- 43 David R. Boyd, “Catalyst for Change: Evaluating Forty Years of Experience in Implementing the Right (...)
- 44 Kirsten Williams, “Fundamental Environmental Rights: State Constitutions as a Vehicle of Change,” J (...)
19The case garnered significant public and media attention as a symbol of youth activism against climate change and the legal effort to hold the government accountable for its failure to act. Initially, few legal experts expected Juliana to go far.40 The plaintiffs faced an uphill battle in asking the federal court to force the United States government to phase out the use and subsidizing of fossil fuels. One reason for this is the omnipresence and dependence of the United States—and most of the rest of the world—on fossil fuels for transportation, heating, and other essential economic activities. Another reason is that the law, especially the United States Constitution, offers little footing on which to build such a case, since no reference is made in it to the environment or ecosystems.41 An important reason for this is that environmental concerns were not prominent in the minds of those who founded the republic.42 As a result, no right to a healthy environment made it into the Constitution, which makes the United States an outlier today. By one count, in 2018, 155 of 193 (80%) of United Nations members recognized a right to a healthy environment in their constitutions, treaties, or jurisprudence.43 At least six U.S. states have added a provision of this nature to their state constitutions since the 1970s, but the daunting process of amending the U.S. Constitution and the influential fossil fuel lobby have so far prevented the same on the federal level.44
- 45 Juliana v. United States (9th Circuit), No. No. 18-36082 (9th Circuit Court of Appeals Jan. 17, 202 (...)
- 46 Oral Arguments in Juliana v. US, 2019, accessed Sept. 21, 2023, https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/ (...)
- 47 Ibid. at 46:04-46:06 and 46:28-46:31.
20The absence of a clearly-recognized legal basis on which to build their claim formed a formidable challenge to the plaintiffs. Judges in the United States are guided by precedent (stare decisis) and usually build their decisions on widely recognized rights or readings of the Constitution. The judges in Juliana were no exception. The U.S. Supreme Court, after denying an early motion by the federal government to stay the case, noted that the “breath of respondent’s claim is striking.”45 It is not surprising, then, that the lawyer for the plaintiffs denied that the Court had to find any new rights and framed the relief sought as emanating from the right to life, liberty, and property, as well as bodily integrity, personal security, and family autonomy—all unenumerated, recognized rights.46 In response to this, Judge Hurwitz responded by pointing out in oral hearings, “You’re arguing for us to break new ground.” He understood that the case was not an ordinary suit and concluded, “You are asking us to do a lot of new stuff, aren’t you?”47
- 48 Florence T. B. Simon, “Ensuring Climate Litigants’ Standing: Insights from National and Internation (...)
21The government’s strategy in the case was to seek delay and dismissal. As a result of this, a lot of space in the court documents is devoted to the issue of standing. The legal concept of standing refers to a person’s or group’s eligibility to bring a lawsuit in a court of law and determines whether the party has sufficient interest to have the court hear and decide the dispute.48 Typically, a party has to demonstrate that they suffered or are likely to suffer concrete harm or injury as a result of the action being challenged, as well as that the defendants’ conduct causes the harm and that the court can intervene to make a meaningful difference in resolving the dispute. This last point is known as redressability, and would prove the stumbling block for the judges in Juliana.
- 49 Juliana v. United States at 11.
22The Court’s decision, handed down on January 17, 2020, reinforces the idea of a generational split on the climate issue. While technically all three judges belong to the baby-boomer cohort (1946-64), the two senior judges, Andrew Hurwitz (1947) and Mary Murguia (1960), argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing, while their junior colleague, Josephine Staton (1961), wrote a scathing dissent in which she sided with the plaintiffs. Judge Hurwitz, appointed by President Obama in 2012, wrote the majority opinion. His opinion opens by pointing out his sympathy for the plaintiffs, but denying them real redress. He denies that the Court can issue a remedy, citing the so-called political question doctrine, and concludes that: “such relief is beyond our constitutional power. Rather, plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.”49
- 50 At oral argument, for example, Hurwitz asks the attorney for the plaintiffs, Olson: “You don’t doub (...)
23Hurwitz shows his age in this opinion when he quotes Barry McGuire’s 1965 protest song “Eve of Destruction” in the opening paragraph; a song that came out 36 years before the oldest plaintiff was born. Hurwitz, who turned 18 the year the song was released, overlooks that McGuire’s song is concerned with the instant destruction of the atomic bomb—“if the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away”—while the plaintiffs fear the gradual heating of the planet, which few realized was underway in the 1960s. Hurwitz’ use of the song is ironic, because it is skeptical of the very type of institutional relief that the Judge would have plaintiffs seek. Referencing segregation, McGuire warns of a misplaced faith in Congress, singing “handful of senators don’t pass legislation.” Hurwitz’s decision forces the plaintiffs to seek salvation from the very politicians that even he himself at one point admits will not respond favorably to their pleas.50
- 51 Juliana v. United States at 33, 43, 64.
24The dissent in the case is written by Judge Staton, federal District Judge for the Central District of California. Staton’s outrage is clear from the opening pages of the dissent. Facing a “[…] government [that] bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation,” she argues, “my colleagues throw up their hands, concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the Judiciary.” Telling the plaintiffs to seek recourse from the political branches, she notes, is the same as “telling them they have no recourse.” Staton sides with plaintiffs and writes that “the Constitution does not condone the Nation’s willful destruction.” In her closing lines, Staton channels the future, making the voice of future generations present in the here and now. “Where is the hope in today’s decision?” she asks, “[…] history will not judge us kindly. When the seas envelop our coastal cities, fire and droughts haunt our interiors, and storms ravage everything in between, those remaining will ask: Why did so many do so little?”51
- 52 Edelman, No Future, 19, 75.
25While invoking the plight of the Child, both the majority and dissenting opinions, for different reasons and to a different extent, succumb to the logic of reproductive futurism. Judge Hurwitz does so most starkly. By referring the plaintiffs to a Congress and President that even he himself admits will likely not fix the issue, Hurwitz pays lip service to the idea of saving-the-children while simultaneously making them responsible for fixing climate change. He frames the plaintiffs as sympathetic protestors who are simply asking the wrong branch of power and the Court as a helpful guide that points out the right one. Stanton, while recognizing the Court’s responsibility in the climate issue, stops short of kneeling “at the shrine of the sacred Child,” to use Edelman’s words. At the same time, by equating the young plaintiffs with the future and the choice to side with them as “choos[ing] the future,” her opinion continues to draw on its logic.52 Both Hurwitz and Staton reproduce the notion that the young plaintiffs represent the future, while simultaneously depriving them of agency over that future, but where Hurwitz’s opinion offers them no future at all, Staton’s reduces the plaintiffs’ role to future witnesses and judges the existing adults’ inability to provide a clean and healthy environment for them.
- 53 For a helpful, but incomplete, overview, see: Parker et al., “When the Kids Put Climate Change on T (...)
- 54 Staton points to this in her dissent, see Juliana v. United States at 49.
26The Ninth Circuit Court’s decision to dismiss Juliana meant it joins a long list of cases that have suffered a similar fate across the globe.53 Despite their sympathy for the plaintiffs and their cause, the Court’s majority concludes that it cannot tell the other two branches how to address climate change, since this violates the separation of powers—neglecting, for a moment, the fact that federal courts do this on a regular basis.54 As will become clear in the next section, the decision was a big blow to the plaintiffs and their sympathizers, while the dissent served as a vindication for their cause.
4. Youth v Gov
- 55 This project (called the Witness’s Trust) resulted in the 2011 documentary series Stories of TRUST: (...)
- 56 Susan Messer, “Filmmaker Q&A with Director Christi Cooper and Producer Olivia Ahnemann,” One Earth (...)
- 57 Mark Segal, “Young Activists Sue for a Safer Planet,” The Easthampton Star, March 11, 2021, https:/ (...)
27Youth v Gov follows the plaintiffs and their legal team from the eve of the federal District Court hearing on September 12, 2016, to the Ninth Circuit decision in early 2020. In contrast to the courtroom, the youth of the plaintiffs features prominently in the documentary. Close to a dozen of the plaintiffs—including Kelsey Juliana, Aji Piper, Jayden Foytlin, Jacob Lebel, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Levi Draheim, and Vic Barrett—are filmed at home on a farm in Oregon, in the Florida suburbs, and in the Louisiana bayou. The film is directed by Christi Cooper, a stem-cell researcher turned film director. Youth v Gov is Cooper’s first feature film. She started making short films about youth climate activists in 2011, in the course of which she met some of the plaintiffs and their legal team.55 In 2016, she realized the potential of the Juliana case, and decided to bring public attention to it: “I dropped everything else to pursue it,” she told one interviewer.56 The film is based on more than 200 hours of recording and substantial archival research into the U.S. government’s subsidizing of fossil fuels.57 The documentary premiered in the United States on November 11, 2020 at the Doc NYC festival, and worldwide on Netflix on April 29, 2022.
- 58 Netflix Q3 report to shareholders, published Oct. 17, 2024: https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/d (...)
- 59 Catalina Iordache, Tim Raats, and Sam Mombaerts, “The Netflix Original Documentary, Explained: Inve (...)
- 60 Sudeep Sharma, “Netflix and the Documentary Boom,” in The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainm (...)
- 61 Ibid., 148-149.
- 62 Suzanne Enzerink, “Imperial Screens: The Illusion of Cosmopolitanism in the Netflix Documentary Gen (...)
28With over 282 million subscribers globally, Netflix is the biggest on-demand streaming service and potentially offers a much broader audience for documentaries like Youth v Gov than the festivals and small theaters which traditionally screen them.58 Youth v Gov is one of around 60 long documentary films that Netflix bought exclusively for its platform in 2020.59 As Sudeep Sharma notes, Netflix “has made feature-length documentary a core pillar of its service,” and this has contributed to the growth of the platform.60 Sharma emphasizes that Netflix’s interest is primarily commercial, which explains why it focusses on documentaries that are “traditional in terms of style and format [and] easy to market,” such as films about social issues and biographical films.61 Youth v Gov clearly fits this bill and bridges both genres by offering a collective biography of the young plaintiffs seeking a more habitable future planet. It is also representative of Netflix’s offerings in that it focuses on the United States and is in English, as is true for the vast majority of Netflix documentaries.62 How many of the millions of subscribers watched the film is hard to say, as Netflix does not share this data.
- 63 Doc NYC Youth v Gov Q&A with Director Christi Cooper and Selected Plaintiffs, 2020, accessed April (...)
- 64 Segal, “Young Activists Sue for a Safer Planet.”
29The film intentionally portrays the plaintiffs as the future, and both relies on and furthers the Child-as-innocent trope. Director Cooper frames her documentary as giving a voice to young people. In a Q&A with several of the plaintiffs for the Doc NYC premiere in 2020, she argues that “what is really unique about this story is […] it’s coming from your [points to plaintiffs] voices. It’s the youth voice, and it’s your lived experiences.”63 In Cooper’s view, their young age not only frees the plaintiffs from culpability regarding the present climate crisis, but also bestows a genuine candor and authenticity to their activism. “I think young people don't have the political blinders that older people have,” Cooper says in an interview with the Easthampton Star in 2021, “They're really looking at these issues coming from a pure justice standpoint of right and wrong, and to me that’s really refreshing.”64 Cooper presents this youthful naiveté as a virtue, not a drawback, since it means that the plaintiffs are not yet encapsulated by the loss-aversion logic of fossil fuel capitalism.
- 65 Doc NYC Youth v Gov Q&A, at 28:37-28:49.
- 66 Ibid., at 25:02-25:21.
30Both the director and the plaintiffs publicly stress that the intended audience of the film is intersectional as well as intergenerational. Many of the plaintiffs point out that they hope the documentary will inspire other youth to stay hopeful and take action in their local communities. At the Doc NYC Q&A, plaintiff Levi Draheim says he hopes “that loads of young people get to see this film” and learn that “even though you are a kid, there’s still things you can do even if you can’t vote.”65 His fellow plaintiffs Xiuhtezcalt Martinez and Vic Barrett add that the film shows the diversity of the coalition fighting climate change and gives voice to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) activists by fusing climate justice and social justice. Director Cooper, finally, hopes this will inspire older generations of climate activists. “For me as an older person,” she says, “[…] your [plaintiffs’] generation really has brought in this completely different approach to equality and justice and elevating marginalized voices.”66
31Youth v Gov constitutes an interesting source for the ways in which Juliana v. United States brings together and pits generations against one other. The film touches on intergenerational themes throughout and my analysis below will focus on how it portrays climate change as both and arena of intergenerational conflict as well as an opportunity for cooperation.
4.1 Intergenerational Conflict
32The opening scene of the documentary invokes the Child trope by contrasting the innocence of youth with the greed and hypocrisy of adults. It opens with of collage of home-cam recordings of the plaintiffs growing up juxtaposed with them getting ready for court. Kelsey Juliana’s voiceover explains the motives of the plaintiffs:
- 67 Youth v Gov (Netflix, 2022) at 01:26-02:05.
I think for a lot of young people right now, life is very scary, because we’ve never seen a moment like this in history. And our feelings about our life and future is all because of choices we had no participation in. And so, the plaintiffs joined this case because we all know who’s to blame and what needs to be done.67
- 68 Ibid., at 22:41-22:44.
33The combination of the voiceover and the collage presents a strong emotional contrast. The endearing home-cam footage of babies and toddlers snuggling with their siblings and parents foregrounds domestic happiness. This carefreeness of early youth is interrupted by Kelsey’s fear for her life; at one point she says “I’m scared shitless for my future.”68 The opening of the film first appeals to the viewers’ own recollection of childhood, and then to the adult, parental, instinct to want protect children and provide them with a bright future. Finally, it draws strongly on the innocence trope, as both the home-cam shots and Kelsey’s narration frame the plaintiffs as having had no choice in, and therefore no blame for, the changing climate.
- 69 Ibid., at 55:39-55:44.
34The documentary next pivots to whom it identifies as the real villain: the United States government. The opening scene is followed by dramatic music and a pulsing timeline stringing together portraits and statements of past presidents—from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama—about the need to protect future generations, interspersed with shots of massive oil fields and dramatic cuts to youth climate activists explaining how the government has completely failed to secure their future. The apparent emptiness of the politicians’ concern for the wellbeing of future generations is vividly displayed when the documentary turns to the efforts of the federal government to conceal the harms of fossil fuels to the public.69 Interestingly, the documentary here exposes the same worship of the Child-as-savior by presidents to which society at large, and the film itself, as I will argue, falls prey.
- 70 Ibid., at 01:00:24-01:00:43 (Speth) and 01:01:30-01:01:33 (Olson).
35In these opening minutes, the film sets up a generational contrast between the political class and the youth climate activists, who are stepping up after adult politicians failed to act on climate change, even when they knew the threat it posed. Several former government climate experts are filmed opening their massive paper archives, which overwhelmingly demonstrate that the White House was informed early on of the dangers of climate change, to the plaintiffs’ investigating team, As former U.N Administrator James Speth explains, the government made a deliberate choice after 1974 to cozy up to fossil fuel companies. “The history of this whole period has got to be the saddest story ever told,” he says. “I think it is the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic.” Attorney Julia Olson is more pointed: “It’s the biggest crime against humanity ever.”70
- 71 Ibid., at 22:19-22:30.
- 72 Ibid., at 25:18-25:24.
36In contrast to the slash-and-burn attitude on the part of business and politics, the documentary portrays the plaintiffs as feeling responsible for handing over the earth to future generations. The plaintiffs speak openly about their concerns for the future habitability of their hurricane-wrecked and wildfire-plagued homes. Juliana explains that this is her main motive in filing the suit: “Knowing that my kids might only know snow through motion pictures, that’s very challenging to overcome.”71 The same is true for Jayden Foytlin, who is filmed on a flatboat in the beautiful southern Louisiana bayou with oil platforms in the background. Jayden was 13 years old when the case went to trial on September 13, 2016. She is from Rayne, in the Cajun heartland of Louisiana, less than an hour’s drive from the Gulf Coast. After explaining how important environmental protection is in her Indigenous culture, she talks about her reasons for joining the case, saying, “When I do have kids, I want to be able to come down here and for them to see what it was like when I was growing up.”72
37In short, while presidents and politicians prefer short-term profit over the environment, the young plaintiffs are portrayed as concerned about the future and the wellbeing of their generation and the ones succeeding them. As Xiuthezcatl explains:
- 73 Ibid., at 19:40-19:53.
We will not allow multi-billion dollar industries to silence our voices. We will not allow the federal government to silence our voices. We will continue to stand in our courts to ensure a healthy just and sustainable planet for our generation and the ones to follow.73
- 74 Ibid., at 01:05:52-01:05:55.
- 75 James E. Lennertz, “Suspect Classifications and the Supreme Court,” EBSCO 2022, accessed July 14, 2 (...)
38This generational contrast is maintained when the documentary pivots to the courtroom itself, particularly in the scene on the Ninth District Court of Appeals hearing on the government’s motion to stay, on December 15, 2017. Here, Judge Alex Kosinski—born in 1950 and appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1985, since retired—is seen slouching in his chair, looking bored and resting his head on his hands while pointing out that the plaintiffs are “no different than anybody else” in claiming to be affected.74 In doing so, Kosinski calls into question the notion that children are what in law is called a ‘suspect classification’—that is, a group that is historically subject to discrimination and therefore deserves special protection.75
- 76 Ibid., at 01:05:55-01:06:15.
39Olson answers by pointing out that “Children are disproportionately experiencing the impacts of climate change and will going forward.” And while the camera notes the clock ticking down her speaking time—and, metaphorically that of the world’s ability to turn climate change around—she continues, “Your Honor, they [points to plaintiffs] will live far longer than you, so the significance of the harm, the monumental threat that these injuries pose to these plaintiffs is very distinguishable from the rest of the country.”76 The scene is a reminder that it is the plaintiffs, not those actually speaking in court, who will face the consequences of leaving fossil fuel emissions unaddressed.
40The scene is also one of the few moments where the age of the plaintiffs is brought up in the courtroom. As indicated above, the plaintiffs do not represent themselves and, therefore, do not actually speak up in court. Instead, they have front-row seats to the adults arguing their case. In the scene, Olson actively involves them in the case and her words form a marked break with the formal reasoning that usually characterizes oral arguments. Olson here veers away from legalese and makes the age difference present and personal (“they will live far longer than you”). In doing so, she exploits the age gap between the plaintiffs and judges and inverses the hierarchy, with the former calling on the latter to account for the consequences of their actions. Here again, the documentary relies on the child-as-savior trope to do its persuasive work.
- 77 Ibid., at 19:12-19:18.
- 78 Ibid., at 01:04:45-01:04:47.
41In a way, Judge Kosinski’s portrayal is characteristic of how the government’s side features in the documentary. The lawyers for the government and fossil fuel companies are neither interviewed nor profiled in the documentary. Their views appear briefly in the film and these short appearances are not meant to paint a flattering picture. Early on in the film, at the District Courthouse, we see a group of attorneys for the fossil fuel companies making their way to the exit, refusing to comment on the case.77 Later on, during the same 2017 hearing to dismiss that features the Kosinski incident, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Grant is filmed during the oral argument saying that the trial is needlessly burdensome, is “clearly meritless,” and mostly for show.78
- 79 Richard J. Lazarus, The Rule of Five, 91-96.
42The contrast between the fun-loving youth on the one hand, and the serious older male suits on the government’s team reinforces the generational clash portrayed in the film. Yet there is a missed opportunity here to lay bare the government’s involvement in the climate coverup. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, the opposing counsel in the 2019 hearing, for example, was deeply involved in the Bush Administration’s failed attempt to prove that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not set fuel exhaustion standards for motor vehicles in the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA.79
43The fight for climate justice in general and the Juliana case in particular comes across as a clash of generations at several points in the documentary. The courtroom forces these generations to interact, but they are portrayed as separate and sometimes conflicting groups. The youthful candor and innocence attributed to the plaintiffs is contrasted with the hypocrisy and greed of the federal government. This innocence is what sets the plaintiffs apart from those they face. It means that they are not yet “locked in”—to quote Cooper—and corrupted by the fossil fuel system and can see a way out. In contrast, the lawyers representing the government point out that quitting fossil is pointless and impossible, and in so doing, they simply reinforce the honest and committed ethos of the plaintiffs. Perhaps without meaning to, Judge Kosinski challenges an important underlying assumption of the documentary in the scene cited above—whether the young plaintiffs deserve special treatment. This assumption, rooted in reproductive futurism, fuels how the documentary displays cooperation between generations, a topic to which I turn next.
4.2 Intergenerational Cooperation
44In addition to a clash of generations, Youth v Gov also features several instances of intergenerational solidarity and demonstrates how the case serves to bring different generations together. First, the film portrays the plaintiffs as a close-knit, intergenerational community sharing meals, singing, and marching together for climate justice. Some of the older plaintiffs (Xiuhtezcatl, Vic, and Aji) are intimate friends, and plaintiffs of all ages are pictured hugging and hanging out together. Julia Olson and her team appear comfortable around the children, having worked with them on prior cases on the state or local level. There are multiple scenes in which Olson is standing side-by-side with the plaintiffs at rallies on the steps of the federal courthouse. Parents are not prominently featured in the film—with two exceptions that I will discuss next—but they are present in these shots, cheering on the children and standing with them.
- 80 Youth v Gov at 22:47-23:00.
45Second, the documentary contains two scenes—one reinforcing, the other challenging—of solidarity between generations. The first shows how the parents of lead plaintiff Kelsey Juliana (Tim Ingalsbee and Catia Juliana) organized protests to save wildlife in the 1990s and inspired her to do the same. Juliana’s parents, who are briefly interviewed, can be seen cheering on the plaintiffs at every step in the case, holding up banners and giving them high-fives while entering the courtrooms. Kelsey explains how her parents’ activism fuels her own, especially when she feels like the future is slipping away from her: “then I remember my parents, rising up over profits and greed and illegal activities by our government and they inspire me every single day,” she says.80
- 81 Ibid., at 41:12-41:14 and 42:07-42:09.
46The other scene is that of Vic and his father Kevin Barrett. Vic, born Victoria (the name that is still on the list of plaintiffs of the official decision), is a Black and Latinx queer trans man who confronts not only the federal government, but also his father. As Vic puts it, his father “doesn’t really believe in climate change.” During a meeting between the two filmed in Central Park, Vic is put on the defensive by his father, who does not see the urgency or danger of climate change and likens it to Chicken Little, “running around saying the sky is falling.”81 Vic is stung by his father’s dismissal and, in response, accuses him of rationalizing the problem. Kevin is skeptical, but not dismissive, and sees himself as belonging to the majority of people who find it hard to believe that their fossil-fueled way of life is so destructive. Referring to the then-recent 2016 elections that gave Republicans unified control over the presidency and Congress, Kevin depicts himself as a good test case:
- 82 Ibid., at 42:35-42:56.
You may be incredulous about my opinion about some of these things, but trying to influence me is going to be a test, because for the next period of time with Trump in the White House (…) you’re gonna have to convince them too. And that’s gonna be an undertaking.82
47Kevin represents an isolated—apart from the government lawyers—and skeptical voice in the documentary, and this scene stands out because it challenges the assumption that the Child needs little justification for their position beyond their youthful innocence. Rather than address this, the documentary draws on this scene to reinforce the Child-as-savior trope by, first, positioning it as one example of the personal sacrifice that the plaintiffs make as a result of their activism and, second, by offering a redemptive closure that reinforces this trope.
- 83 Youth v Gov at 01:19:45-01:19:57.
48The disagreement between Vic and his father is one of several stories in the documentary about the personal toll that climate activism takes on the young plaintiffs. Whereas Kelsey has strong support from parents who take pride in her activism, Vic has to defend his activism against a father who does not seem to appreciate the urgency of the case. Later in the documentary, Jayden explains how her involvement in the case cost her friendship when her best friend’s mother cut ties between them. “Being a plaintiff in this lawsuit, it’s very frustrating,” she says, yet hastens to add: “But I’ve never felt like quitting. I always felt like what I’m doing is right.”83
- 84 Ibid., at 01:44:52-01:45:09.
49As this quote illustrates, the documentary portrays the personal sacrifice of the plaintiffs as illustrative of their commitment, and ultimately frames it as redemptive. After recounting her lost friendship, for example, Jayden emotionally explains how the case has brought her twenty new friends in the form of her fellow-plaintiffs. In the last shot of the documentary, the story of Vic and his father Kevin is picked up again. Meeting on a beach after the decision is handed down, Kevin this time sounds much less sure of himself, saying, “I know you’ve been frustrated when I open my mouth on this issue, but I can only say that I would endeavor to find out more and to learn more. So let’s agree to have you teach me more.”84 Even if Vic and his fellow plaintiffs are rebuffed by the court, the film implies, they have succeed in winning over skeptical adults. This final scene offers closure, not only for the plaintiffs’ legal battle—to which it offers a redeeming and future-oriented quality—but also to the Child-as-savior trope itself, which finds its strongest expression in Kevin’s subservience to Vic.
- 85 Ibid., at 01:35:41-01:36:04.
50This message of empowerment and redemptive vindication is also how the decision by the Ninth Circuit is ultimately portrayed in the documentary. After showing the upset and downbeat reactions of several plaintiffs, including a crying Kelsey Juliana, who shares that “it feels like a death,” the film pivots to a message of defiance. Kelsey internalizes the logic of reproductive futurism when she explains how she is “thinking about all those young voices,” and decides she needs to be “hopeful still for them.”85 Next, the film features several of the plaintiffs reading Staton’s scolding rejection of the majority opinion to the viewer mixed in with shots of youth—including Greta Thunberg—marching across the globe to upbeat music. Attorney Olson explains how the case is now back in the court of Judge Ann Aiken—the District Judge who first gave the plaintiffs a fighting chance—and also sounds hopeful, saying,
- 86 Ibid., at 01:42:19-01:42:34.
I hope these kids will go down in history as the kids who brought the Brown v. Board of Education decision on climate. I hope Kelsey Juliana is the name people remember and learn about 100 years from now.86
51The argument here is that the young plaintiffs have justice and history on their side, if not (yet) the law, and that their perseverance will ultimately prevail. Olson connects the plaintiffs and the case itself to another landmark case, Brown, that overturned decades of court-sanctified segregation in the U.S. South. By situating the plaintiffs in the tradition of the school children whose parents filed the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit, Olson is projecting a future in which environmental justice is achieved and makes it seem like victory in this case is only a matter of time. The Child-as-savior trope comes full circle here, as the preferred future projected onto the Child is assumed to have come about, despite the fact that the court has just handed them a legal defeat.
5. Conclusion
- 87 Patti Moore, Danny Noonan, and Erik Woodward, “Juliana v. United States and the Global Youth-Led Le (...)
52Juliana is an interesting case study of what happens when posterity—represented by the young plaintiffs—actively asks for their future interests to be honored by the United States government. Although the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals decision meant that Juliana did not go to trial, the case had an impact on the debate on climate change far beyond the legal realm. Thanks to the documentary Youth v Gov in particular, the case helps diversify what youth climate activism looks like, and has inspired others across the globe to sue their respective governments and demand a right to a clean and healthy environment.87 Some of these cases, including the Held case mentioned previously, helped break new ground in youth climate litigation, yet Juliana fared differently. In May 2024, at the request of the Biden administration, a three-judge panel of Trump appointees of the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed the 2020 decision and ordered District Judge Aiken—who had earlier agreed to proceed to trial—to dismiss it. After seven such requests on the Circuit level and two at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court over the course of nearly ten years and three presidencies, this decision seemed to spell the legal end of the line for Juliana v. United States.
53This article demonstrates that while the judges in Juliana v. United States and the director of Youth v Gov claim to have their best interests at heart, both invoke the Child trope to assume their voice and speak for them. In both cases, the plaintiffs’ youth serves as both an opportunity as well as a burden. Their young age enables them to claim to speak for the future, but at the same time limits their ability to voice their concerns themselves inside the courtroom and allows adults to claim to speak for and through them. The judges’ decisions reflect the logic of reproductive futurity by not only equating the plaintiffs with the future (Staton), but even thrusting the responsibility for fixing the future onto them (Hurwitz). While youth voices are literally given a platform in the Netflix documentary, the film also captures the ways in which the federal government, aided by attorneys and the law, successfully deny their concerns and dismiss their pleas. In claiming a redemptive quality for their activism and casting their case as the successors of the Civil Rights Movement, the documentary replicates the Child trope by portraying the plaintiffs as the future saviors of society and, unwittingly, speaking through, rather than for, them.
- 88 Weiser and DeMartino, “Reproductive Futurity,” 1.
54In the end, both the court and the documentary fail to do justice to the interest of the plaintiffs by uncritically falling prey to reproductive futurism. Both proclaim to be on the side of the children, but, to various degrees, replicate the logic of reproductive futurism by projecting onto them the image of the Child as innocent saviors of society and the way out of the current climate crisis. The majority opinion of the Court stands out in particular, as it charges the youth with fixing the climate and, in so doing, ends up blaming the victims. As Weiser and DeMartino point out, this type of “worship at the altar of the child […] [which] insist[s] on the importance of children to save us from how we have ruined the planet,” goes hand in hand with adult disregard their own responsibility for fixing the planet, and instead places the burden future generations.88 The same logic underlies the documentary and the dissent, though to a lesser extent. Here, the notion that the Child will safeguard the future is coupled with a genuine interest in the plaintiffs’ views. The result, however, is a similar projection of the Child-as-savior who not only finds themselves on the right side of history, but whose future victory is ensured.
- 89 Jennifer Hijazi, “Justice Department Wins Bid to Quash Juliana Youth Climate Suit,” Bloomberg Law, (...)
- 90 Jennifer Hijazi, “Youth Climate Plaintiffs Seek Rehearing After Ninth Circuit Loss,” Bloomberg Law, (...)
- 91 See: https://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/case-documents/2025/20250324_docket-24-645_ord (...)
- 92 Kempf, “Why Did So Many Do So Little?” 1035.
55The jury is certainly not yet out on the legacy of Juliana v. United States. In her first reaction to the decision to dismiss, Attorney Julia Olson called it “a tragic and unjust ruling,” and signaled a willingness to continue the fight, saying, “it is not over.”89 On June 17 of that same year, the plaintiffs filed a so-called en banc petition, asking for the full Ninth Circuit Court to rehear their case and overturn the panel’s decision.90 These attempts to revive the case were finally blocked in March 2025, when the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Alito, denied to hear the case.91 Legal scholars point out, however, that losing a court case can serve as a catalyst for social movements, and Juliana might still end up mobilizing support for the plaintiffs’ cause.92 The fact that similar cases are making their way through the legal system in Hawaii, Florida, and Utah, suggests, at least, that the legal career of the Child trope is far from over.
Notes
1 A. Crimmins et al., “The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2016), 2.
2 Aoife Daly, “Climate Competence: Youth Climate Activism and Its Impact on International Human Rights Law,” Human Rights Law Review 22, no. 2 (June 1, 2022): 1-24, 1, 5.
3 Lena von Zabern and Christopher D Tulloch, “Rebel with a Cause: The Framing of Climate Change and Intergenerational Justice in the German Press Treatment of the Fridays for Future Protests,” Media, Culture & Society 43, no. 1 (Jan. 1, 2021): 23-47, 32, 37-38; Karen O’Brien, Elin Selboe, and Bronwyn M. Hayward, “Exploring Youth Activism on Climate Change,” Ecology and Society 23, no. 3 (2018): 1-14, 7.
4 John Bowder, “Kids Confront Feinstein over Green New Deal,” The Hill, Feb. 22, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/431238-kids-confront-feinstein-over-green-new-deal/.
5 Youtube: Cut for Time: Dianne Feinstein Message – Saturday Night Live, March 19, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP_iVlEyp5M. Accessed September 26, 2024.
6 Lisa Friedman, “Dianne Feinstein Lectures Children Who Want Green New Deal, Portraying It as Untenable,” The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2019, sec. Climate, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/climate/feinstein-sunrise-green-new-deal.html.
7 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 2-3.
8 For an incomplete overview, see Larissa Parker et al., “When the Kids Put Climate Change on Trial: Youth-Focused Rights-Based Climate Litigation around the World,” Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 13, no. 1 (March 1, 2022): 64-89.
9 See for example: Aoife Daly, Pernilla Leviner, and Rebecca Thorburn Stern, “How Children Are Taking European States to Court over the Climate Crisis – and Changing the Law,” The Conversation, April 8, 2021, http://theconversation.com/how-children-are-taking-european-states-to-court-over-the-climate-crisis-and-changing-the-law-158546.
10 See for example: Kyrre Kverndokk, “Talking About Your Generation: ‘Our Children’ as a Trope in Climate Change Discourse,” Ethnologia Europaea 50 (2020): 145-58.
11 Edelman, No Future, 11.
12 Ibid., 13.
13 S. Gavin Weiser and Linsay DeMartino, “Reproductive Futurity: Policy, Pop-Culture, and Praxis,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 47, no. 2 (2025): 1-22, 1.
14 Bill Nichols and Jaimie Baron, Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition, 4th ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024); Carl R. Plantinga, Rhetoric and Representation in Nonficton Film, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Chapbook Press, 2010).
15 Nichols and Baron, Introduction to Documentary, 79-80, 83, 76.
16 Ibid., 13.
17 Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint (Sept. 10, 2015), 34.
18 Richard J. Lazarus, The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2020), 4.
19 James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), xii.
20 Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint (Sept. 10, 2015), 34.
21 It is important to note that age is not an indicator of one’s views on climate change. A good example of this is that the attorneys for the federal government, Jeffrey Clark (1967), and for the plaintiffs, Julia Olson (1971), belong to the same generation.
22 Joerg Chet Tremmel, ed., Handbook of Intergenerational Justice (Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2006), 4-5.
23 Roman Krznaric, The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World (London: WH Allen, 2020), 72, 87.
24 Dale Jamieson, Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 191.
25 For attempts to overcome this, see: Debra Hawhee, A Sense of Urgency: How the Climate Crisis Is Changing Rhetoric (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2023), 39-41.
26 Anja Karnein, “Can We Represent Future Generations?,” in Institutions For Future Generations, edited by Iñigo González-Ricoy and Axel Gosseries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 87.
27 Ibid., 87.
28 Rebekah Sheldon, The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2016), 35.
29 Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2017).
30 Luke Winslow and Eli Mangold, Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements (New York: Routledge, 2024) 2.
31 Jelte Olthof, “Projecting a Future Present: Greta Thunberg’s Use of Presence at the United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019,” Res Rhetorica 8, no. 1 (2021): 66-82.
32 Samantha Cocco-Klein and Beatrice Mauger, “Children’s Leadership on Climate Change: What Can We Learn from Child-Led Initiatives in the U.S. and the Pacific Islands?” Children, Youth and Environments 28, no. 1 (2018): 95.
33 Daly, “Climate Competence,” 14.
34 See climatecasechart.com for a (partial) overview of past and current climate change litigation brought by minors across the globe. Accessed Sept. 27, 2024.
35 Rikki Held v. State of Montana, No. CDV-2020-307 (Montana First Judicial District Court, Lewis and Clark County, Aug. 14, 2023).
36 For example, some scholars observed in 2018 that: “surprisingly little attention has been given to analyzing expressions of dissent among youth,” see: O’Brien, Selboe, and Hayward, “Exploring Youth Activism on Climate Change.”
37 Sally Neas, Ann Ward, and Benjamin Bowman, “Young People’s Climate Activism: A Review of the Literature,” Frontiers in Political Science 4 (Aug. 4, 2022): 1-13, 1-2; Anandita Sabherwal et al., “The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg Predicts Intentions to Engage in Climate Activism in the United States,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 51, no. 4 (2021).
38 Neas, Ward, and Bowman, “Young People’s Climate Activism,” 5; Frida Buhre, “Child Figurations in Youth Climate Justice Activism: The Visual Rhetoric of the Fridays for Future on Instagram,” in The Politics of Children’s Rights and Representation, edited by Bengt Sandin et al. (Basingstoke: Springer International Publishing, 2023), 252-253.
39 Juliana v. United States, First Amended Complaint (Sept. 10, 2015), 56, 94.
40 Chloe N. Kempf, “Why Did So Many Do So Little? Movement Building and Climate Change Litigation in the Time of Juliana v. United States Notes,” Texas Law Review 99, no. 5 (2021): 1005-1040, 1022.
41 Robert V. Percival, “Greening the Constitution - Harmonizing Environmental and Constitutional Values,” Environmental Law 32, no. 4 (2002): 809-872, 812.
42 Ibid., 814.
43 David R. Boyd, “Catalyst for Change: Evaluating Forty Years of Experience in Implementing the Right to a Healthy Environment,” in The Human Right to a Healthy Environment, edited by John H. Knox and Ramin Pejan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 18.
44 Kirsten Williams, “Fundamental Environmental Rights: State Constitutions as a Vehicle of Change,” Jurist News (blog), Nov. 1, 2021, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/11/kirsten-williams-environmental-rights-amendments/. Accessed September 30, 2024. They are: Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. In the last case, this applies to fishery only. A recent development since the decision in Juliana is the Biden administration’s decision, in July of 2022, to recognize in the United Nations General Assembly a limited right to a healthy environment. While this resolution requires governments to ensure a clean environment, the U.S. government has made clear that it considers it legally non-binding. See: Jacob Katz Cogan, “The United States Recognizes the Human Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment,” American Journal of International Law 117, no. 1 (January 2023): 128-133, 129, 132.
45 Juliana v. United States (9th Circuit), No. No. 18-36082 (9th Circuit Court of Appeals Jan. 17, 2020).
46 Oral Arguments in Juliana v. US, 2019, accessed Sept. 21, 2023, https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/video/?20190604/18-36082/ at 45:31-46:02.
47 Ibid. at 46:04-46:06 and 46:28-46:31.
48 Florence T. B. Simon, “Ensuring Climate Litigants’ Standing: Insights from National and International Climate Litigation,” Connecticut Law Review 56, no. 4 (May 2024): 1173-1209.
49 Juliana v. United States at 11.
50 At oral argument, for example, Hurwitz asks the attorney for the plaintiffs, Olson: “You don’t doubt that Congress and the President could give you the relieve you seek? […] We may have the wrong Congress and the wrong President. That has occurred from time to time [laughs],” see: Oral Arguments in Juliana v. US at 35:07-35:25.
51 Juliana v. United States at 33, 43, 64.
52 Edelman, No Future, 19, 75.
53 For a helpful, but incomplete, overview, see: Parker et al., “When the Kids Put Climate Change on Trial.”
54 Staton points to this in her dissent, see Juliana v. United States at 49.
55 This project (called the Witness’s Trust) resulted in the 2011 documentary series Stories of TRUST: Calling for Climate Recovery. The documentaries feature Kelsey Juliana, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, and Jamie Lynn Butler (among others), all plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States.
56 Susan Messer, “Filmmaker Q&A with Director Christi Cooper and Producer Olivia Ahnemann,” One Earth Film Festival, March 8, 2021, https://www.oneearthfilmfest.org/earth-words-blog/2021/3/8/filmmaker-qampa-with-director-christi-cooper-and-producer-olivia-ahnemann.
57 Mark Segal, “Young Activists Sue for a Safer Planet,” The Easthampton Star, March 11, 2021, https://www.easthamptonstar.com/arts/2021311/young-activists-sue-safer-planet.
58 Netflix Q3 report to shareholders, published Oct. 17, 2024: https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2024/q3/FINAL-Q3-24-Shareholder-Lettter.pdf.
59 Catalina Iordache, Tim Raats, and Sam Mombaerts, “The Netflix Original Documentary, Explained: Investment Patterns in Documentary Films and Series,” Studies in Documentary Film 17, no. 2 (2023): 151-171, 158.
60 Sudeep Sharma, “Netflix and the Documentary Boom,” in The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, edited by Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2016), 143.
61 Ibid., 148-149.
62 Suzanne Enzerink, “Imperial Screens: The Illusion of Cosmopolitanism in the Netflix Documentary Genre,” Studies in World Cinema 2, no. 1-2 (2022): 74; Iordache, Raats, and Mombaerts, “The Netflix Original Documentary,” 161-162.
63 Doc NYC Youth v Gov Q&A with Director Christi Cooper and Selected Plaintiffs, 2020, accessed April 24, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aChF0QjlJB0&list=PLpA9CP7ojEQgV5B9PekyJ37gEb0sPiG9O&index=104 at 7:38-7:51.
64 Segal, “Young Activists Sue for a Safer Planet.”
65 Doc NYC Youth v Gov Q&A, at 28:37-28:49.
66 Ibid., at 25:02-25:21.
67 Youth v Gov (Netflix, 2022) at 01:26-02:05.
68 Ibid., at 22:41-22:44.
69 Ibid., at 55:39-55:44.
70 Ibid., at 01:00:24-01:00:43 (Speth) and 01:01:30-01:01:33 (Olson).
71 Ibid., at 22:19-22:30.
72 Ibid., at 25:18-25:24.
73 Ibid., at 19:40-19:53.
74 Ibid., at 01:05:52-01:05:55.
75 James E. Lennertz, “Suspect Classifications and the Supreme Court,” EBSCO 2022, accessed July 14, 2025, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/suspect-classifications-and-supreme-court.
76 Ibid., at 01:05:55-01:06:15.
77 Ibid., at 19:12-19:18.
78 Ibid., at 01:04:45-01:04:47.
79 Richard J. Lazarus, The Rule of Five, 91-96.
80 Youth v Gov at 22:47-23:00.
81 Ibid., at 41:12-41:14 and 42:07-42:09.
82 Ibid., at 42:35-42:56.
83 Youth v Gov at 01:19:45-01:19:57.
84 Ibid., at 01:44:52-01:45:09.
85 Ibid., at 01:35:41-01:36:04.
86 Ibid., at 01:42:19-01:42:34.
87 Patti Moore, Danny Noonan, and Erik Woodward, “Juliana v. United States and the Global Youth-Led Legal Campaign for a Safe Climate,” in Standing up for a Sustainable World: Voices of Change, edited by Claude Henry, Johan Rockström, and Nicholas Stern (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2020), 155.
88 Weiser and DeMartino, “Reproductive Futurity,” 1.
89 Jennifer Hijazi, “Justice Department Wins Bid to Quash Juliana Youth Climate Suit,” Bloomberg Law, May 1, 2024, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/justice-department-wins-bid-to-quash-juliana-youth-climate-suit.
90 Jennifer Hijazi, “Youth Climate Plaintiffs Seek Rehearing After Ninth Circuit Loss,” Bloomberg Law, June 18, 2024, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/youth-climate-plaintiffs-seek-rehearing-after-ninth-circuit-loss.
91 See: https://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/case-documents/2025/20250324_docket-24-645_order-list.pdf.
92 Kempf, “Why Did So Many Do So Little?” 1035.
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Electronic reference
Jelte Olthof, ““For Our Generation and the Ones to Follow”: Intergenerational justice and the Child-as-savior trope in Juliana v. United States and the Netflix documentary Youth v Gov”, European journal of American studies [Online], 20-2 | 2025, Online since 01 June 2025, connection on 11 April 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/24170; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/14ein
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